Cool! For a moment I thought Fredled resurrected some old mod of yours.

Very nice!  I will be looking forward to this one

manshooter, this will be asked by many, but it will probably get  the same answer as always, but

any idea when you migth be releaseing the mod?

harpo

I made a cheap "antiscout mine" that does scout killing damage and has a longer range trigger and effect than the other mines.  You put them in with the big  ones and they can take out the scouts.

Looks cool--i liked the turnip shaped siege frigates.

Also, here is a background lore update for the Scout, Siege and Assault Drones. Enjoy!

Drones in general are approximately the size of frigate ships; they have no crew and posess, like all Xin ships, a degree of sentience, enabling them to operate semi-independently, make autonomous decisions and also obey complex orders or follow tactics at least on the level of complexity employed by the other three factions. As such, they are often equipped with sensory organs designed to enable them to perform their roles, which cannot be found on larger, crewed Xin ships.

Their origin is, again as with all other Xin creations, organic. While nobody knows exactly how Xin build their living vessels, there is no doubt that these organic ships can and do perform just as well if not much better in the hostile environments of space as their non-organic analogs.

One other distinctive quality all Xin vessels share is the lack of a visible propulsion system. It is speculated that the Xin ships, from the smallest Scout Drone to the gargantuan Leviathan utilize an advanced form of gravity manipulation, where intense gravitational tidal waves are created and shaped in order to propel the ships through space.

Drones also come in many shapes and sizes:

The Scout Drone represents the eyes of the Xin fleets. As such, they are generally smaller than usual, and built for speed rather than offense or defense. Unlike most Xin Drones, they do not have a tough coral-like carapace, instead relying only on a specialized type of organic "glove" for protection against hazards of deep space.

Their eyes are extremely large and, in addition to the central optical organ, positioned at various places along their bodies to maximize data input. Protected by a mirror-like membrane, these organs can sense light in an extremely wide spectrum, from ultraviolet to infrared. It is speculated they can even sense radio waves and gravitational disturbances (mass).

The long tendril-like antennae are just that - communication organs. The primary role of Scout drone is to observe and report, and it is well equipped to do just that. Scout drones, like all living creatures, need to feed from time to time to replenish their energy reserves. They do this, however, very rarely; each drone needs to feed only a couple of times a year. Unlike most other drones, the Scouts grapple suckling protrusions present on some of the larger vessels and orbital structures with their rear tentacles and firmly attach themselves to the structure before proceeding to feed.
An alternative way, utilized by all drones and Xin ships is to ingest nutritious spores via their body orifice(s). These spores are usually released by the Chimera, large seeding ships responsible for creating new Xin colonies.

 
Assault drones are built for one thing only - killing. They are fairly fast, tough and posess a powerful plasma ejector organ, which can spit out gobs of superheated plasma out of their central orifice. The plasma travels at a relatively slow speed, but is viciously effective at punching through both shields and armor, simply by either melting everything in its path or overloading electronic systems with a localized EMP pulse and a surge of electricity. The main orifice of the plasma ejector also serves for ingesting food when necessary.

Designed for front-line battles, the Assault Drones are encased in a thick layer of hard, chitinous armor which helps protect them in combat, in addition to the numerous shielding growths which project a strong energy field around them which is hard to break through.

Like other Xin ships, the Assault Drones also utilize the gravity wave generators for propulsion. Two small eye organs at the back of the main section provide the drone with limited visual input; it is speculated that the Assault Drones track their targets either with the help of Warmasters and their smaller cruiser sized variants, or by detecting the mass of their targets in space.

Siege drones are specialized units designed for attacking the surface of enemy planets, thus preparing them for seeding by the Seeder Pods or Chimaera capital ships. To that purpose they are unique amongst Xin Drones is that they do not require external sources of energy and thus have no orifices for feeding. Instead, they produce vast amounts of energy through their internal gravity-mass transmutation organs, the exact details of this process still being very much unknown.

As the result of having such levels of energy stored within their bodies, the Siege Drones are capable of emitting and focusing extremely powerful beams of synchronized electrons, producing a weapon capable of punching through even the thickest of atmospheres. However, Siege drones lack the brainpower to lock on and track smaller targets, so are unable to turn their planet-razing weapons against space ships and stations, unlike larger Xin ships.

Incredible.

For this weeks update I am proud to present one of the more useful additions to any Xin commander's arsenal: the Warmaster class capital ship.

While all Xin ships possess a degree of sentience, the Warmaster is unique in that it has a much more developed neural structure than other ships, even capitals. This enables it to perform complex calculations and structured reasoning necessary to coordinate entire fleets, regardless of their size, thus increasing their combat effectiveness beyond what they would be able to achieve on their own.

This is made possible by the Warmasters unique sensory apparatus, which is not present on other capitals - its nine wide-spectrum sensory blisters, protected from the rigors of hard vacuum and radiation by mirror-like membranes mimic those found on the Scout Drones, but are much larger in size and an order of magnitude more effective. This allows the Warmaster to sense not only from infrared to ultraviolet radioation, but also magnetic disturbanced (such as generated by planets, ships etc.) and even gravitational fluctuations.

In other words, nothing can hide from its gaze.

The information thus gathered can be efficiently distributed by the Warmaster's ten high-yield communication tendrils, allowing it to simultaniously communicate with every ship in the fleet.

Last but not least - while the Warmaster is not the most powerful ship in the fleet, it is by no means defenseless. Not only can it utilize its eight gravity well generators to prevent enemy fleets from jumping into phase space, it can also use those same generators to emit powerful streams of directed protons, which serve as excellent short-range defense.
For larger targets, and longer ranges, the Warmaster uses eight large caliber guided plasma ejectors located on the side bulges. This, in addition to the customary powerful shielding and think organic armor makes the Warmaster a force to be reckoned with on any battlefield.

The Vasari will enjoy the challenge the Xin present. We will run no longer.

I believe that currently the Vanilla races will NOT get new types of capital ships. They will be unique to the Xin. Keep in mind however that with Rebellion coming out, they will then getting new ship types. It will be interesting.

Oki thnx. For what version of the game will the mod be exactly? In case I have to make a backup of my old game directory before (or if) new patches and rebellion come out.

And YES we do, there's nothing more fulfilling than utterly decimating an enemy with overwhelming fire-power

Stardock should pay you...just saying

Hear that, Stardock?

One on one, Xin will nearly always win. Their battleship will almost always tear apart a vanilla battleship. The problem for Xin is that, even though their ships are superior in performance, they are much fewer in number. So basically, when they focus their strength they can be overwhelming - but then they have to leave themselves exposed for a counter-attack and leave their background defenseless. Should they fail when attacking with their full strength, it will take them longer to recuperate from their losses as well.

Also, the Xin are slower to move and maneuver, both in normal and phase space - outside of their territory. Within their territory, the Xin can build a cheap network of wormhole relays which enable them to zip around at great speeds (applies only for phase space travel, in normal space they're as slow as usual).

So hopefully it will all balance out in the end. If required, of course, further balancing will be done post-open beta launch, when more people have had a chance to try out the mod and voice their opinion on how it plays.